


Hunted, Ensnared, Coveted

by simplygrimly



Category: Original Work
Genre: Animal Attack, Burnt alive, F/M, Fantasy, Gun Violence, Haunting, Horror, Magic, Murder of minor character, Whump, bound in chains, bound in rope, chained prisoner, executed witch, man shot dead, restrained
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26789749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplygrimly/pseuds/simplygrimly
Summary: Callan is a witch hunter who suddenly finds himself at the mercy of a witch hell bent on vengeance against his kind.
Collections: Ten Trails Whump Challenge 2020





	1. Animal Attack

His head lolled back and to the side, swinging in a limp circle as if it were somehow too heavy for his neck to support as the cold air that swept over his skin brought him out of the haze and slowly forced his world into focus. He groaned and forced his eyes open, blinking hard to try and clear his vision so that he could see past the heavy darkness that cloaked the room. The deep ache in his shoulders thrummed through his mind, pulsing on a rhythm that he couldn’t quite follow. 

Slowly his eyes adjusted to the dark, the shadows and faint lines of the room becoming clearer as if they were slowly emerging from the ghoulish depths of the abyss that lurked beyond the far edges of the room. He couldn’t fight the weight in his pounding skull, couldn’t lift his head enough to properly attempt to look around the damp room that he had woken up in, so he simply followed the pale glow of his arms as if tracing lines on paper, his slowly working their way up to the iron shackles that were locked around his wrists and suspended from a length of iron chain links that ascended somewhere far beyond his mind’s grasp. 

He closed his eyes as a wave of nausea clawed its way up his chest and settled at the top of his throat, waiting to yank the contents of his stomach into the open at the slightest provocation. With as little effort as possible, he brought his head forward until his chin rolled over his chest, moaning quietly as the movement threatened to engulf him in dizziness. He pitched forward as far as he could, trapped unnaturally upright by the chains connecting his wrists to whatever anchored them above his head, his body giving in to the sickening sensation that crept forward until warm spit pooled in his mouth. He breathed heavily, not caring about the string of saliva that slipped over his lip and hung somewhere in the pitch black surrounding him. 

A retching moan filled the emptiness around him, but it took a moment to register that the sound was his own, that his body was aching for relief from the misery of the unknown. His body came back to his mind a sliver at a time. The return of each sensation felt like an assault on his senses as he slowly started to register each stabbing pain, each sharp prick of discomfort, each slice of agony, each tingle of heat that adorned his nerves like fine jewelry. He whined his discomfort as his strength returned, each experimental twitch of his muscles seemed to rip through him like fire determined to burn through to his core. Another cold wave of air brushed over his skin, making him suddenly aware that his body was bared to the mysteries of the room, and he gritted his teeth against a full body shiver that did nothing to warm him but brought a fresh burst of pain and nausea to the forefront of his concentration. 

He stared into the darkness, tried to force his eyes to focus on  _ anything _ , any indication that he hadn’t simply been dumped in a hole and left for dead. The air shifted and he caught a hint of a glimmer in the darkness, the shimmer of magic that hovered at the edges of his vision whenever a witch was near. He feels her. He feels her aura move closer to him, reach for him, curl around him like a hawk’s talons around a field mouse. He feels her, but he doesn’t see her. He narrowed his eyes, searching out even a small sign of a change in the room, the glittering darkness becoming more pronounced as she gets closer without getting close enough that he can make out her form. He strains to listen, closes his eyes to focus on the silence beyond his heavy breathing. He hears the swish of cloth on the stone floor and his pulse quickens, his heartbeat moves through his mind like waves and drowns out the slight sounds that she makes, leaving him with a hopelessly vulnerable pit in his stomach that paired sickeningly with the hollow sensation growing in his chest. 

The darkness somehow deepened, her power casting them further into the void and feeding on the panic that bubbled in his blood. The hair on the back of his neck slowly raised to their full height, standing at attention as goosebumps layered over his skin. His body screamed a warning at him, instinct begged him to put distance between himself the witch that hovered at the edges of his sight. He could feel her circling him like a hungry vulture circled a dying animal. He didn’t give in to the mounting desperation that crawled through his veins and lit his nerves on fire. Rather, he forced his muscles to keep deathly still, wary of her unseen proximity, all too aware of what the touch of a witch could do to him. 

“Welcome back, Callan.” 

His head snapped to the left at the sound of her voice, but it quickly bounced to the other side of the room and left him disoriented as the pain of the sudden movement blended into the haze of her magic glittering around him. 

“It took you longer to wake than I expected, how are you feeling?”

Her voice was everywhere and nowhere all at once. He strained against the manacles at his wrists, finally giving in to the impulse to try and get away from her, but the thick metal didn’t budge and Callan had no choice but to try to listen through her magic to gauge how far away from him she was. 

As if she could read his thoughts (maybe she could, he had no way to know), she took a step closer to him in the shimmering black and he could make out the basic lines of her figure directly in front of him. Callan glared at her, his trepidation subsided into a simple rage, a simple hatred, and his eyes locked on what he could see of her. 

“What do you want from me, witch?” 

From the corners of his eyes he could see the glimmer of the room change from black to faint speckles of purple and blue, but he couldn’t look away from her as her yellow eyes began to glow through the inky layer of magic in the room and her smile spread in a faint line that sent a chill up his smile. She stepped closer still, illuminating herself with a faint glow that reminded him vaguely of a firefly in the grass. Her eyes flickered like wildfire in the night and her lips spread in an unsettlingly hungry smile, her teeth bared like a creature baring its fangs to it’s prey. Her magic shimmered in erratic bursts around them and he felt a twinge in his stomach as everything started to change. 

The black of the room swirled in green and brown streaks and trees started to emerge from the dense layer of darkness. Callan narrowed his eyes at the witch as her features lit up in the handcrafted sunlight, he quickly noted her silver curls that hung in wild tendrils and the unnaturally sharp features of her face that reminded him vaguely of the images of the fae his grandfather had kept in his sketchbook. Her eyes darkened, focused on him more intently as the forest around them came into focus and Callan suddenly felt himself free of the iron manacles that had kept him restrained only moments before. He curled his toes against the ground, felt the dirt beneath his feet so clearly that he had to remind himself that it was a creation of her mind and power. 

“What is this,” he asked quietly, trying to keep his voice steady through the deep throb in his joints. “What do you want from me, huh?” 

She raised a brow and tilted her head at him, staring with a predatory glint in her eyes that made his stomach sink as he caught a shimmer of yellow move through the trees around him, a sure sign that her magic was completing the illusion and casting him too far into the enchantment for him to escape. He tensed, tried to ignore the deep ache in his body as he forced his muscles to contract, ready to fight whatever she had planned. 

Her teeth began to change and her eyes darkened to deep black wells of nothing as that same yellow shimmer now hung around her, little red spots twinkling here and there and setting him further on edge. He took a step backwards, leaning away from her as she stepped forward to keep the distance between them even even as her form began to blur and darken into something  _ else _ . 

“I want you to run,” she hissed through quickly sharpening teeth. 

He took another step back and a twig snapped under his feet, the loud crack of splintering wood yanking him out of the cloud of fear and setting off a flood of adrenaline that ripped through his veins and erased the pain that had occupied his entire body only a moment before. Red sparks crackled around her as a swirl of black and grey smoke whipped through the false air in dizzying circles and his heart stuttered in his chest as the deep growl of an animal clawed into his mind. 

Fear gripped him like a steel vice tightening horrifyingly slowly around him. His eyes went wide, the realization of what was happening dawned on with startling ferocity and he struggled to breathe as the mist cleared and he found himself face to face with a sleek black wild cat. It growled at him, snarled with long, deadly teeth and licked its chops as it eyed him. He glanced up and was stunned to see the witch’s unmistakable deep amber eyes, now staring at him as though he were little more than a pound of raw meat laying unattended, an easy meal to be devoured with little to no effort. 

The cat stepped forward and he glanced down, barely able to take in the sight of huge claws flexing in the soft forest floor before he was stumbling desperately away from it. Her voice echoed in Callan’s head as he tripped and fell back to the ground, scrambling backwards as the cat prowled closer. 

_ I want you to run _ . 

Callan turned over and desperately tried to right himself as he clambered toward the illusion of safety, away from the giant cat and further into the woods that she was projecting into the far reaches of his mind. Logic told him that running was futile, a useless attempt to escape a terror that she was creating special for him, but the rush of fear and panic that flooded his senses was as inescapable as the cat now moving through the trees somewhere to the right of him. 

He raced through the forest, bare feet digging into the warm earth and patches of moss, the trees little more than blurs of color whipping past him with the occasional red and yellow twinkles of magic that he caught in the corner of his eyes. Callan ran until he was out of breath, stopping when he was sure that the only thing he heard was his own footsteps and heavy breathing. He stood still, forced his breathing to slow down and closed his eyes to try and listen for her. 

He furrowed his brow at the silence, realizing that he heard nothing but himself in the forest. No birds, no small animals moving through the flora, no wind disturbing the leaves above him. He heard nothing to indicate that this wasn’t just a surge of magic forced into his consciousness, but his skin bristled suddenly and Callan could  _ feel _ her. He kept his eyes closed but turned his head on a slight tilt, forcing his senses to focus on the edges of her magic, sure that she was closer than she appeared. 

Callan opened his eyes to see a flash of sleek, black fur move swiftly through the trees, glimmering with a hint of magic that made the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. He turned quickly, trying to track her form as she paced circles around him, weaving in and out of the dense foliage too quickly for him to catch more than quick glimpses of her lithe feline body. He turned in circles, following her near silent steps and the heavy panting that seemed to naturally accompany her enlarged lungs as she inhabited the body of the beast. 

His pulse raged in his ears, crashing over his mind again and again like angry waves of the ocean crashing over jagged rocks. He turned and turned, fumbling to follow the signs of her magic moving around him, his breathing growing harder and harder as anxiety gripped his ribcage and squeezed the contents therein. 

Something in his mind broke and his fear turned to rage, tinting the edges of his vision with blood red that followed no matter how fast he turned to keep pace with her predatory lurking through the heavy trees. “What do you want from me!” He screamed at the flicker of black that shone in the too bright sunlight and the red sparks of magic increased as his heart beat harder against his ribcage, quickening as his mind tried to hide behind the anger he had readily available. 

He clenched his fists, dug his nails into his palms, and clenched his jaw. He felt the oppressive haze of her magic, the heavy mist that clung to the air as it immersed him in the forest of her own creation, the trap designed to torment him. It came into focus as he forced his thoughts down to a whisper, the air full of magic like the low buzz of static electricity, layered seamlessly under the sound of his own breathing and the rustle of her footsteps as they moved around him in tightening circles. “Come out witch! Come face me!”

He turned around again, following the brush of a sound behind him, and screamed at her yellow eyes only inches from his. She opened her mouth wide, her jaw stretched unimaginably far as she let out a deep, rolling roar that dusted his face with flecks of saliva. He jumped back as her hot breath caught in his throat, his deep gasp filling his lungs with the toxic fumes of dark magic. Callan hit the ground, unable to keep his balance as he moved away from her. Her haunches raised high over her limbs, her head dropped low and her mouth hanging open to serve as a never ending reminder of the terrifying set of teeth that she had adopted. 

Blood slowly began to ooze from her mouth, dripping from the long fangs at either side of her mouth in long strings that swung from side to side with every slow, deliberately menacing step she took towards him. Callan’s breath grew shallow, his chest tightening with mounting terror as he watched the blood of what he was sure was her last victim flow from somewhere inside of her, pooling on the forest floor at her feet. Each step closer to him echoed around them with a deep thud of her giant paw on the ground, the size of her claws impossible to ignore as they left deep gashes in the earth like a hint of what was to come when she finally began the process of tearing him to shreds. 

He froze, paralyzed with horrified anticipation as she widened her stride and quickly overtook him. Her oversized feline form hovered over him, snarled with a fury that he couldn’t quite identify through the fog of fear and magic, but the sheen of yellow magic in her eyes warned him not to move as she flexed her haunches and lowered her gaze to his. She let out a huff of sickly sweet breath that swept over his face and tingled the outer edges of his ears and Callan jerked away from her, instinct overriding the warning in her eyes. 

With a small shout of desperation, he turned onto his stomach and dug his fingers into the soft ground, dragging himself out from under her hulking form. A rock dug into his chest as he shimmied out from underneath her, the sharp edge cutting through his shirt and slicing into his skin in a hot burst of pain. He groaned as it continued to drag down his torso, leaving what he was sure would be a scar to remember his encounter with the witch for the rest of his life. 

He screamed in agony as her paw came down on his back, the vicious claws that he had been so fixated on digging into his skin and tearing the flesh open in long lines that burned like fire across his skin as the air touched the exposed nerves. Callan arched his back instinctively, his body reacting to the pain as she dragged him back to her. With a rumbling snarl she curled her lips back to bare the full size of her teeth and bit down on his shoulder, piercing through the vulnerable flesh and dragging an agonized shriek from the deepest corners of his lungs. The pain exploded through his mind and the forest exploded with it, sparkling in waves of red and yellow energy that flickered in his blurred vision and burnt out like the embers of a dying fire. 

As the magic faded in his vision, the forest faded with it and Callan slowly found himself sinking back into the sickening black room, wrists once again shackled over his head to chains that he had no hope of escaping, his body aching with pain that reached deep into his soul. He fell limp against the chains, his eyes fluttering closed as he felt her drag her nails over his shoulder in what felt like open wounds from where the fangs of the black cat had gouged him open. 

“Delicious,” she whispered into the depths of the void, “absolutely delicious.” 

Callan felt the blood trailing down his back and realized that while the forest had been a vision forced into his mind, the wounds that had torn into his shoulder and back had not. The cool air touched the gaping wounds and Callan moaned, the sound low and painfully helpless. 

She moved back to his front, her step light enough that it was almost silent even in the nothing that surrounded them, the tips of her nails dragging over his skin as if she were caressing a pet. He forced his eyes open when he felt her come close to him, determined to meet her gaze in a show of false bravery. 

“You should relax, little Hunter,” she said with a lascivious smile. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

Her voice swam in his head as the black reached into his mind. Callan’s head dropped forward, his chin rolled against his collar bone, and he felt her fingers ghost across his temple as his mind forced him into unconsciousness. 


	2. Mob Violence

Callan drifted in and out of consciousness, his mind going from the terrifying black of the magic that he felt creeping at his edges to the comforting dark of nothingness as he slipped into the safety of exhaustion. His body ached, his joints stiff and inflamed from hanging by the iron shackles. He could feel the swelling in his shoulders, felt them throbbing in tandem with his pulse, each beat of his heart sending a heavy wave of pain as far up his arms as he could still feel. He could feel the chill of the air in his fingers, like ice settled over his skin despite the numbness that crept down his wrists and into his forearms. Relief only came when he drifted away, let his body go limp against the restraints as he drifted in and out. 

Time no longer existed as he hung from the iron, his entire being somehow suspended between reality and the fantasy that she cultivated with her magic. He found himself lost in the blanket of unease that she wove around him with the threads of fear and hopelessness that she pulled from the dark corners of his mind. The only markers for the drag of the hours were the subtle changes in the magic that Callan felt in the darkness, the almost imperceptible shift in the room that let him know the witch was moving around him, keeping to the shadows that lurked outside of the circle of faint light that his eyes had finally adjusted to. 

With no other way to reassure himself that the witch hadn’t frozen time entirely, Callan had taken to using her movements in the sphere of magic as a makeshift chronometer, relying on her restlessness to prevent himself from slipping any further into the void that she had created. She paced around him like the hands on a clock, working circles just outside the edges of his vision. She went around and around and around, her footsteps so silent that Callan wondered if she even touched the floor, each rotation seemingly dragged on at a new speed. 

When he found himself taking comfort in her never ending circles, the witch seemed to sense the brief flicker of peace that sparked like light in his chest and changed directions. She retraced her steps slowly, so deliberately that Callan was sure she was turning time backwards, moving the cycle of the sun and moon to extend the length of time that she was able to keep him without someone coming to look for him. 

Sometimes her energy became chaotic and frightening, her circles becoming fast and frantic. In these moments she went around and around and around, her magic tilting and turning the edges of his mind with dizzying speed. Callan knew it was intentional, he knew that she was pushing the edges of his mind until he spun like a merry-go-round. The peripherals of his thoughts blurred until nausea overtook him and Callan was left to pull against the chains with every heave of his stomach as it tried to turn itself inside out. 

Callan had no idea how much time had actually passed, only the knowledge that she had turned thousands of circles around him, when she finally moved back into his line of sight. He stared defiantly into her amber eyes, unwilling to show the fear that he knew she could feel hovering beneath his thin veil of stubborn bravery. But he didn’t see the same flicker of danger that he had seen before, there was no spark of lethal hunger to meet his gaze, which only set Callan more on edge. He had expected to see the flicker of magic in her eyes, the desire to take more from the recesses of his mind, but what he saw as she stared at him with a slight furrow to her brow was unexpected and impossible for Callan to identify. 

She narrowed her eyes at him, staring beyond his gaze and into some part of his mind that Callan was sure she would use to torment him later, her eyes moving back and forth as if reading the pages of a book. She reached out and ran the tips of her fingers over his cheek, caressing him softly enough that Callan could almost convince himself that it was with fondness. He lifted his chin, pulling his face as far from her touch as possible, ignoring the way her eyes hardened.

The witch followed his movement with her hand, inching her fingers over his cheek bone and up to his temple. Callan felt a flash of pain spike through his head, a blinding knife of sensation that mimicked the worst hours of a migraine compressed into a split second. He clenched his eyes shut, willing his mind to block her out, but her magic crept into his thoughts and the nothingness that he had been trapped in pushed past every mental block that he attempted to erect. 

“I know you felt the magic of this place,” she said softly. “You’re a hunter, a tracker, you can sense the wisps of magic that places like this can’t contain.” Callan took a ragged breath, forced his lungs to expand as her magic took over more and more of his body as it moved deeper into his mind. “Places like this don’t just appear, you know. They’re  _ made _ into what they are.” 

He strained against his bonds, pulled until the metallic clink of the chains grounded him against her magic. But as his muscles tensed and fire tore through the open wounds of iron digging into his wrists, Callan felt the shift in her magic and suddenly his hands were free and the weight of the darkness eased. 

“Open your eyes,” she whispered malevolently. 

Callan felt a shiver crawl down his spine, lingering at each vertebrae so that the chill settled deep in his bones. He opened his eyes as he felt the room grow, the world as she created it sprawling out in the midst of her power to immerse him in whatever she desired. He stood inside of an old cabin, made of uneven wood and furnished sparingly, at least a century before his time. Callan frowned as the figure of a young lady passed in front of him, a shadow of a ghost conjured by the witch for some purpose he was not sure he wanted to know. He turned in a circle, looking at the wood walls that surrounded him, following the movements of the shadow of a woman that once was. She moved slowly, paced the floor in the same pattern as the witch had, as if summoning some power that existed beyond the realm of sight and sound. 

_ This land once belonged to my family, claimed by those who came before me. Their blood seeped into the dirt and made us forever a part of this forest, gifted the earth with a vitality and strength that calls you to it, just like many hunters before you.  _

Callan shook his head, willed himself to stop hearing her voice as the shadow continued to pace, her footsteps becoming more and more frantic as the soft sound of her bare feet moved faster and faster in his senses. The slivers of smoke and swirls of grey slowly took form, giving Callan a clearer picture of the woman. Her full skirts swept against her ankles, sleeves buttoned down to her wrists in a show of modesty. He recognized the prairie dress as being at least 150 years out of fashion, something that he would see in a historical photograph, a museum, or a parade celebrating the heritage of the state. Petticoats and thick cotton rustled together, the seemingly small sound flooding his senses and refusing to release his attention. 

_ Mary Jane Balch was a witch you see, she used her power to lead her husband Danford to this very place. She felt the yearning of the forest, felt it reaching for more than trees and woodland creatures, felt the potential for greatness trapped in the unsettled land. He moved his wife and daughter, Anna, with him, intent on making a better life for them with the newfound freedom of his own homestead built on land that he claimed for his own. They were happy and the earth flourished, fed on the white light of Mary Jane and Anna’s magic.  _

Callan watched as magic changed and formed to show him two others, a man and a younger woman. They moved easily around him, sometimes passing so closely that he could feel the cold static charge of their bodies cast into the depths of his thoughts. Still without the means to measure time, he had no choice but to watch them go about their lives as they made the land their own and carved out a place for themselves in the previously untouched earth. He watched as the forest rewarded them for the renewal of energy, as it gave them gifts of animals to be hunted and plants safe to be eaten, as it kept them alive in exchange for the power that Mary Jane and Anna continued to pour into the heart of the earth beneath them. 

_ But their happiness would not last, as a dark energy would soon dim their light and forever change their destinies with a trick of his own magic.  _

The younger woman swept past Callan, the mirage of her beauty so convincing that he reached out to brush his fingers over the invocation of her form. He was shocked to feel the soft cotton of her clothes, his fingers tangled for a moment in the billowing sleeves of her civil war era white linen blouse. He followed her with his gaze, eyes moving over her outstretched hands as another shadow twisted itself into a man standing with open arms and a bitter smile. She threw herself into his arms, a flurry of petticoats and loose curls colliding with the stoic man who never took his eyes off of her father. Callan could see her lovesick smile, the enamored flutter of her eyes as she stared up at him, the longing so plain on her pretty features. 

_ Danford hired Mortimer Stump to help clear the land, to help make room for Anna’s eventual husband and children, to help him turn her inheritance into something that she could be proud of. But Mortimer had other ideas. The old story goes that they fell in love, that their romance was a whirlwind that neither of them could control. But that wasn’t the truth of it.  _

The young woman, Anna, clung happily to the man’s arm. But his features didn’t mirror the love that she looked up at him with, he didn’t look down at her with the adoring eyes that you would expect to see from a man smitten with a pretty young lady. Rather, his eyes moved around the cabin as if he were surveying a cave in hope of finding treasure, he watched her mother warily as the woman moved from side to side in her agitation, he looked upon her father with a smug, triumphant smirk that carried absolutely none of the respect that a man should pay his love’s family. 

_ Anna insisted her parents allow them to marry, and Mortimer encouraged her demands even after her father denied them. Mary Jane was distraught at her daughter’s choice of consort, she could sense malevolence in the man and had visions of Anna being left heartbroken when he had gotten what he wanted from her. Her father forbade the marriage, and when Anna and Mortimer threatened to elope, he plainly told the two of them that if they were married without his blessing he would shoot Mortimer where he stood when they returned.  _

_ But the pair were undeterred by her mother’s distress and her father’s threats. _

Callan felt a knot of dread forming in the pit of his stomach, felt the crushing pressure of impending doom as the young woman and her chosen partner faded into a swirling mist of magic and the forms of Mary Jane and Danford were left alone in the faint glitter of the cabin. As he would expect of any distraught mother, the woman hung in her husband’s arms, sobbing against his chest as he stared at the empty space that their daughter and her lover had moments ago stood, his features contorted with a burning rage that Callan knew too well. Mary Jane’s pain rolled off of her in waves of glistening energy, a deep blue mist that seeped into the air and left a chill that clung to his skin. Her sorrow was so potent that it overpowered her husband’s anger, made itself the only thing in the room, and Callan felt it work it’s way beneath the surface and mingle with his own emotions until it overpowered his frustration and apprehension, until it rippled over his fear and heightened the sharp unease that hovered at the edge of his thoughts. 

_ They ran off to get married, stayed away for a few weeks of wedded bliss, left her mother and father to mourn Anna’s foolishness. Danford and Mary Jane were convinced that they had heeded his warning, that they would never see their precious daughter again to save Mortimer from being shot dead at the front door. But Anna underestimated her mother’s pain and didn’t believe in her father’s declaration. And so they returned. And Danford made good on his threat. _

The flurry of movement was dizzying and Callan struggled to figure out what had happened for a moment. The shimmering mirages of Anna and Mortimer reappeared in the doorway to the cabin, but in a split second there was a deafening bang and Mortimer was sprawled across the wood floor and Anna was laying across his body in a fit of hysterical wailing punctuated by screams of horror. Danford stood with his jaw set, pistol in hand, still pointed at the space that Mortimer had dropped from when the round had left the chamber. Mary Jane fell to her knees beside her husband, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she watched her daughter with wide, desperate eyes, overcome with shock as her world came apart in a hazy mixture of blood stained wood and the overwhelming smell of copper. 

_ The girl’s father saw the greed in his eyes, her mother saw the evil in his aura, they knew of his intentions and were desperate to keep Anna from his clutches. But even keeping a child safe does not come without consequences, and soon Danford was arrested for his crime.  _

The cabin exploded in movement as men burst through the door, Anna pointed at her father as she wept over her husband’s body, and Danford was quickly forced to his knees and shackled in irons and chains much like those that Callan was being kept in. The magic around him crackled, audibly reacting to the sharp spikes in emotion from the shadows of the past that the witch had cast before him. He tensed as a new layer of magic crossed over his senses, Callan could feel that there was more at play here than just the witch’s abilities. For a moment he thought back to what she had said about the Balch women pouring energy into the land, about blood seeping into the dirt and becoming a part of the woods around them. He knew that he and the witch were not alone, there was more than shadows and spirits in the old Witch’s Castle with them. 

There was magic that came from deep in the land, magic that haunted the woods and preyed on those who dared to venture into the shadows. Magic that lurked deeper than anything the witch could create and rose from the quiet of the forest to wrap around him in suffocating tendrils of hopelessness and despair. Magic that gripped him with enough force to rip the air from his lungs and to stop the blood from pulsing through his veins, magic powerful enough to steal the life force from his body and leave him a haunted husk of what he once was. 

_ Mortimer was not the only man that had darkness in his heart, that carried a ruthlessness in his soul. Danford confessed to the crime of killing Mortimer, but he took no responsibility. Instead, he exposed his wife as a witch and swore that she had bewitched him, commanded him to kill a man that she secretly yearned for but married her daughter instead. He told the townsfolk of her magic, of how she had coaxed the land to flourish over the years and how she had frequently made predictions of the future that only the gift of sight could explain. He told them how she made potions in the cellar, how she filled the cabin with herbs and stones and amulets.  _

The figure of Mary Jane faltered, wisps of smoke interrupting her projected features as she backed into a corner in fear, cowering away from her husband frantically pointing and gesturing to her. Callan sucked in a shocked, fearful gasp as the faceless forms that filled the cabin turned to her, their faces suddenly illuminated with burning red eyes that sent a chill down his spine and made his stomach turn with the vicious spike of anxiety. He didn’t think he would ever forget the malice that filled their hollow, unblinking eyes as their gazes turned to Mary Jane in the corner, he could feel her horror build in his chest and crawl up his trachea to settle at the back of his throat like a dry itch. His hands trembled as she shrunk down away from the crowd of men that was slowly advancing on her, curling into herself in a desperate attempt to make herself disappear. 

_ Anna watched as everyone she loved was dragged away from her family home that night. She wept as they pried her away from her husband’s lifeless body and dragged him to the back of a horse-drawn wagon to be examined. She shook with anger as her father’s wrists and ankles were shackled in iron and he was shuffled away from his homestead as he continued to beg for clemency and blame his wife for his actions. And Anna’s heart shattered, her soul cracked, her mind paralyzed as she watched them bind her mother with ropes and carry her screaming into a fire built of the forest that she had poured so much of her own soul into, that she had given no small part of her life to in order to help it grow. There was no trial, no examination, no investigation - simply a fire fed until it was thrice Anna’s height and her mother helplessly tossed into the flames.  _

His lungs filled with what he swore was smoke and Callan fell to his knees as he watched the crowd of men descend upon Mary Jane. Ruthless hands snatched her from the corner in which she cowered, yanked her small body forward and tossed her to the floor as if she was no more than an oversized rag doll cast aside by a child. Her sobs echoed in the shadows of the cabin that he knew was long gone, the sounds of despair hovered in the twinkling magic that cast images all around him and trapped him in a past long forgotten. She tried to right herself, pushing herself to her knees so that she could look to her daughter, perhaps offer the young girl a whispered goodbye, but one of the men kicked her back to the ground. She laid sprawled on the ground, stunned by how forcefully he had shoved her forward, and he pressed his boot between her shoulder blades and pinned her down. He exerted enough force that Callan could hear her gasping for air, suffocating beneath the weight of him on her back. She tried to whisper a plea for mercy with what little breath she could take, but she was met with more pressure from the overwhelming weight of his body and her words were lost in a desperate gasp for air. 

The air grew heavy and hot and Callan knew the unmistakable scent of fresh wood burning in the pure air of the forest. The cabin shimmered around him, the magic rippling in waves of change as the wood walls faded into dense forest and lush underbrush. He dropped to his knees as he stared at the fire that reached desperately for the sky, overcome with horror and anger as the shadowy forms of men that had left the earth too long ago to be truly remembered stood around the burning pile of wood with arms crossed and stony auras that felt dangerous and unpredictable. Mary Jane was literally thrown to the ground a few feet away from him, sliding across the dirt from the force with which the man had heaved her towards the fire. She cried out in pain and shock and immediately curled in on herself. She clutched her hands to her chest and Callan could see the blue glow of magic radiating in her chest, hidden beneath her palms pressed to her sternum as she rolled onto her knees and folded herself in half, bent over with her forehead to the ground as her lips moved too quickly for him to make out what she was saying. The energy of the earth seemed to pull to her, some invisible force bent to the words that she was whispering into the forest floor as the man descended upon her with a heavy rope that was damp from the Oregon mist. 

She shrieked with rage as the man grabbed her by the arm and roughly turned her onto her back, shaking with barely controlled indignation as he flipped her over and crushed her tiny wrists in his huge hand. Mary Jane was a small woman, her body frail and thin like the branches of a sapling still young enough to bend in the wind. She was no match for the man whose size and cruelty matched that of the bears that hid in the Oregon forests. Callan heard the crunch of her wrists as she tried to pull away and he retaliated, yanking her arms up and squeezing her fragile wrists in a grip that crushed her hands together and snapped bones against each other. The cry of pain that escaped her sounded as broken as Callan was sure her wrists were. 

He threw himself forward, panic spiked in his nerves and he scrambled forward before he could pair the feeling with a logical thought. He reached for Mary Jane as the man wound the heavy rope around her wrists, ignoring her wail of increasing pain as he wrapped it too tightly against the damaged bones. Callan lunged the last few feet, hands outstretched in hopes of putting a stop to the horrific scene that was all too slowly playing out in front of him, forgetting that he was watching nothing more than ghosts and shadows coaxed from the forest with the witch’s magic. His fingers swept through the pair and he cursed his inability to reach into the past to help Mary Jane, he could do nothing but watch as the giant of a man pinned her to the ground and held her still as others came to bind her too tightly with rope that she would never escape. 

She continued to scream in her panic and fury, her voice echoing in the too quiet woods like a dying animal roaring its final breaths. The men gathered around her like vultures, forming a circle to watch as she cried and thrashed within her bonds. Callan watched as tears fell from her eyes, her yearning for vengeance against their cruelty dripping from her cheeks and soaking into the earth, her dying wish becoming a permanent part of the life of the forest. Their eyes continued to track her every move, burning crimson and orange as bright as the fire that hungrily reached for the sky as it waited for their offering, watching her like cats enjoying the frantic last efforts of a mouse caught in the open. 

Mary Jane’s screaming faded into enraged wails which eased into horrified muttering. She cursed the men, looked at each of their faces and cursed the land they lived on and the children that their wives bore them, she cursed them each to lives of misfortune and misery. Her gaze moved from one to the next, her expression sparked with a little more wrath with each whispered wish for their slow destruction. When she came to the large man that had stepped on her, tossed her in the dirt, broken her wrists, treated her with less dignity than he would treat a rat trapped in his kitchen, she said nothing. She stared at him with an expression of vivid malintent, her eyes slicing into him and flaying him open until she could see everything he held most dear, until she could curse the very core of his will to live as she stared at him in open defiance. 

He felt her in his bones, felt the unsettling depth of her gaze, and decided that he had had enough. He stepped forward, stomped his foot on the ground only inches from her head, but Mary Jane did not flinch or pull away. She stared and he stared, both challenging the other in what they knew were her final moments, until he bent down and wrapped his fingers around the rope looped around her chest and hoisted her up in the air in front of him. The men gathered closer, a small mob of misguided righteousness turned evil, and he opened his mouth to demand that she repent. But Mary Jane, with the last dregs of courage that she could summon while she dangled three feet off the ground, suspended between him and the fire, took the chance to spit in his face rather than let him speak. With the gesture of disrespect and malevolence, Mary Jane doomed the man to everything he feared and set her destiny in stone. He threw her into the flames and was met with a round of cheers and laughter from the others looming around the fire. 

Callan choked on his horror, struggled to breathe as the smell of burning flesh and hair permeated his senses and settled deep in his memories where it was sure to haunt him for the rest of what life he had left. The sounds that radiated from the fire were inhuman, as if the fire had opened a trapdoor to hell and the very demons that she had summoned to exact her revenge were crawling to the surface of the earth and scattering into the trees. Callan sat back on his heels, rocking slightly back and forth as he knelt silently. His mind was dazed, thoughts scattered, too lost in his horror at the sight of the flames licking their way over her flesh and stealing her skin and nerves and muscle away from her as her lungs filled with smoke and eventually the silence of death marked her. 

_ Anna left Oregon after that, she fled the cowardice of her father, the fear of those who had murdered her mother, the curse that she felt hovering on every inch of her family’s land from the moment the flames touched her mother’s skin. Danford was the first man to be legally hanged for his crimes in the state, and the murder of Mary Jane was explained away as being an act of Godliness and soon forgotten. But the forest never forgot, she lives on through the curse that she embedded in this land, and the souls that wander here become trapped for eternity. When the magic of the earth is powerful enough, Mary Jane crawls free of the place she burnt to nothing and casts her spell anew - curses whoever may be wandering across the site of her end _ .

Callan closed his eyes as the forest shimmered again, the glittering wisps and traces of magic fading to black as the shackles renewed their grip on his wrists and pain spiked through his shoulders again. 

“Anna never told anyone that she was carrying Mortimer’s child, and when she gave birth she left the babe on a church alter. She walked away from her and never returned, abandoned her cursed bloodline and dark magic.” Callan narrowed his eyes at her, watched as her amber irises turned dark with an aching sadness that he could feel ripple in the darkness around them. “We are both,” she whispered with sinister finality, “of that dark, cursed bloodline.” 


End file.
